For the North

Three events happened last week that, if explored, could lead to useful talks on a Nigeria structured on productive federalism.

On January 28, Boko Haram, like a bolt from the blue, declared a unilateral ceasefire, on the condition that its destroyed mosques are rebuilt, the state pay compensation for past alleged abuses on its members and a general amnesty is declared, setting its members in gaol free.

The pronouncer of the “ceasefire” was one Sheik Abu Mohammed Abdulazeez Ibn Idris, self-announced Boko Haram “second commander” for north and central Borno (Borno is the epicentre of the insurrection), who claimed a (divine?) charter from Abubakar Shekau, his leader, to announce the “ceasefire”. He spoke in Maiduguri.

On the same day, a conclave of “northern elders” under the aegis of the Northern Development Focus Initiative (NDFI), met in Kano to throw their weight behind the Boko Haram offer. Now, was this support a coincidence? Or was it choreographed to hustle the polity into some Boko Haram soft landing, despite the heinous crimes its members, particularly the hiding and cowardly ring leaders, have committed against innocent citizens?

Certainly, the way NDFI glibly talked of post-Boko Haram “restoration, reformation and rehabilitation” (hardly a crime), and quickly linked that proposal to amnesty for Niger Delta militants, was highly suspicious of a well-crafted script to push the sop of convenient “peace”; over the rigour of justice that insists on punishment following crime.

So, the Jonathan Presidency must not allow itself to be bustled into another classic Northern entitlement (that sickly rationalisation that the polity must always accommodate northern excesses) in the name of easy peace that would come back to plague everyone.

Get this clear: when a deranged group of citizens slaughter others as Boko Haram is doing, there must be dire consequences to avert a future recurrence. But that piece of common sense appears lost on the NDFI amnesty orchestra.

Nevertheless, it is not lost on victims whose blood and gore Boko Haram has wilfully spilled on a fraudulent creed. Neither is it lost on any putative lunatic fringe sure to plot their own mass murder, for whatever vacuous doctrine, should Boko Haram get away with a slap on the wrist.

The third event happened the next day, January 29.

At Enugu, the political capital of the old Eastern Region, a body that calls itself the Southern Nigerian People’s Assembly (SNPA) gathered to push for a restructured Nigeria, a national conference to bring out that restructuring along productive federal lines, fiscal federalism to form the basis of the new federation, recognition of the six geo-political zones as Nigeria’s new federating units, and shutting out the meddlesome interloper that is the Federal Government in local council business, which ought to be an exclusive state affair, among other demands.

Pa Clark is though, right now, burning nationwide bridges he built over the years in the cause of his underwhelming godson, President Goodluck Jonathan, all in the cause of the 2015 Ijaw presidency project; down from the pan-Nigeria mandate of Southern Nigeria and the Middle Belt that propelled Jonathan to power in 2011.

But the amalgam of SNPA members would appear far less credible, with many of the hoard clambering on the southern unity campaign and the push for true federalism as a last straw to clutch for political relevance. Nevertheless, gunning for relevance in a political quicksand is no crime!

Still, this pot-pourri of divergent interests, and the penchant for each to clutch at some gains no matter its absurdity, would appear to explain the patent contradiction in the SNPA demands. The body calls for a restructured federation. Yet in another breath, it wants additional two states, with one in the South East, to bring the South at par with the North.

While creating additional states makes sense with the present parasitic unitary system masquerading as a federation, it makes absolutely no sense in a restructured Nigeria SNPA is pushing for – except as a Freudian slip that suggests that structure or no structure, the parasitic Nigerian power elite have a sickly consensus on feeding fat on the system!

Or how else does one explain the multiplication of wasteful bureaucracy, which new states epitomise, when it is proved beyond any doubt that many of the so-called states are a drag on real development but only a sop for elite greed?

But to juxtapose a body grandstanding for change with another grandstanding for the status quo, just consider the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF’s response to SNPA’s call for two additional southern states. ACF, in a February 1 communiqué in Kaduna dismissed the call, noting rightly that it would only be wasteful bureaucracy. But if new states must come, ACF insisted, they must be based on population and land mass. How convenient!

Still, many positives can be taken from these developments. The SNPA must avail itself sharper conceptual clarity on its mission, if it is to escape a harsh historical judgment of empty posturing for relevance, when it had the chance to push back the country from the precipice. ACF must manifest less of the sickening sense of northern entitlement. That has put both the North and the whole country in this present bind.

But the more exciting chimes have come from the NDFI, notwithstanding its shopping for subversive sympathy for Boko Haram. The body is talking of a pan-northern free primary and secondary education. That is highly welcome, for it is telling the North to abandon its age-old system of elite education hinged on native feudalism and embrace mass education, to build a future equal-access and equal-opportunity society. That is strategic thinking.

But in a not-so-shocking relapse into that notorious northern sense of entitlement, NDFI called on northern states to compute their Boko Haram security spends; and pass the bill to the Federal Government, since the 1999 Constitution charges that government with security. Excellent sophistry!

Maybe Governor Babatunde Fashola and other southern governors, busy equipping the central police even when they are not effective chief security officers of their respective states, should forward their own bills to the Inspector-General of Police for settlement!

But maybe the polity should indulge these northern states. Maybe the Federal Government should settle the bills. Surely, Nigeria needs a Marshal Plan for Northern Development, after its thieving elite had misused federal power and had beggared their region for eons.

But that should be the final settlement in exchange for a trade-off for rigorous restructuring of Nigeria along productive federal lines. That way, the North – and the rest of the country – can look after its own interest and develop at its own pace.

That may well save the contraption of Lord Fredrick Lugard, and its ever present threat of collapse, as it lumbers to its centenary.

I have always belief that many of the Northern Elites Know the Boko Haram Members as the latter bomb innocent citizens from Church to church. Now they are having open conferences with Boko Haram leaders! I wonder how many of those now holding conferences with Boko Haram that were not truly involved in the killings.